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Josh Brolin has a bone to pick with the academy.
The actor, 56, shared that the Oscars got it wrong when they failed to nominated his “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve for the 2021 sci-fi movie. This year, Villeneuve is up for consideration for the award again for “Dune: Part Two.”
The sequel received better reviews than the original film, with Brolin reprising his role of Gurney Halleck, a mentor to Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides.
“If he doesn’t get nominated this year, I’ll quit acting,” Brolin told Variety in an interview published Thursday. “It was a better movie than the first one. When I watched it, it felt like my brain was broken open. It’s masterful, and Denis is one of our master filmmakers. If the Academy Awards have any meaning whatsoever, they’ll recognize him.”
Villeneuve, 57, is set to be recognized at the IndieWire Honors 2024 and will receive the director tribute at the Gotham Awards. But Oscar nominations will not be unveiled until early 2025.
“Dune: Part One” gained the second highest number of nominations at the 94th Academy Awards with 10 nods, but Best Director was not in the mix.
Brolin said in a Twitter video at the time that the director not being nominated was “unbelievable, almost numbing, flummoxing.”
“It’s just one of those things where you go, ‘Huh? What?!’ ” the actor continued. “I don’t know how you get 10 nominations and then the guy who has done the impossible with that book doesn’t get nominated. It makes you realize that it’s all amazing and then it’s all f–king totally dumb. So congratulations for the amazing accomplishments that these incredibly talented people have been acknowledged for, because it’s all really, really dumb.”
In March, Brolin gushed over the film on social media.
” ‘Dune 2’ is a train that’s tapped into a need we all have to be told great stories. Stories about perception, coming to terms with ourselves, the importance of ecology and what it means to fall in young love and have to navigate a life in spite of it. ‘Dune’ touches, like the great films and books did us as kids,” he explained on Instagram.
“We have let fear and contraction turn us cold, so when something that comes around to remind us of our bravery, our challenges, our soft hearts and our abilities to prevail keeping always the bigger picture in mind, we toast it, emotionally. Thank you, Denis Villeneuve for reminding us through your humanitarian perspective. Thank you, Frank Herbert for providing for us the real within your fantasy. Entertainment that nourishes. The imagination’s nectar. ‘Dune 2’ hit the center of a need and humanity wins again.”
But regardless of “Dune’s” magic, Villeneuve said he doesn’t create for the sake of winning awards.
“As a filmmaker, you’re a lonely wolf. When your work is appreciated by the community, it feels like you’re part of a family. That’s what truly matters to me,” he told Variety earlier this month. “Making movies means being away from your family for months. Every time I finish a film, I sit down and ask myself if the flame is still there because I’ll never make a film without that fire inside me.”
Another snub Villeneuve has kept in mind all these years? Amy Adams not being Oscar-nominated for her role in his 2016 sci-fi feature “Arrival” — despite earning a Best Director nod himself.
Villeneuve called the outcome a “big disappointment.”